I wish to repost the following here, in tribute to my father, who is the singular person in my life who helped me to become the person I am today. This was printed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the early 2000s, with a photo of myself as a toddler with my father in his WWII uniform, after his passing on February 15, 2000:

“YOU WERE A GIANT OF A MAN IN MY EYES

I want you to know that I love you from the bottom of my heart; that I am proud of your accomplishments, your vision and creativity.

Above all, I want you to know that I am grateful to you for teaching me to be true to myself, to respect the power of the written word, to use whatever gifts I possess to bring light – not heat – into this world, and to love others unconditionally.

You were a giant of a man in my eyes. If the world failed to see it, it was their loss. I love you, Daddy.”

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In addition, I posted the following on an AJC blog, today:

“Here is a mysterious coincidence which occurred on my blog this morning. The anonymous reader of my blog also* read the following entry I had made in 2011, entitled ‘A Wind Is Rising. . .’ which I could have dedicated to my deceased father because he is the person who had introduced me to novelist Thomas Wolfe’s words, which I post in this entry.

With my innately mystical leanings, I could not help but speculate if my own father’s spirit is the anonymous reader of my blog, who keeps one step ahead of me with my former writings. My father was blessed with a photographic memory, which I do not have, and he could contain all of my writings on my blog in his head at once, unlike myself. If that anonymous reader of my blog is my own father, I give you a public tip of the hat from the other side, Dad, with my thanks!”

On September 20, 2016, I posted the following comments regarding praise for my father on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s columnist and blogger, Jay Bookman’s blog:

“I believe my own father, a south Georgia city manager, and Director of Vocational Schools for homecoming veterans of WWII of all races, was a greater man than Donald Trump, billionaire and con man, could ever hope to be.
My father had his faults, like us all, but he was a believer in God, Jesus Christ, and a believer in America. He practiced in his deeds those beliefs, held firm in his heart, all of his 80 years of life, and he wrote his book of his contributions to Georgia in context of Georgia’s political landscape of his era, of his love of this nation, and of his abiding spiritual beliefs for others to read after he passed. Donald Trump cannot come close to being the great man who my father was, and the great men and women throughout this nation who have contributed to its genuine greatness for nearly 3 centuries.

Donald Trump is a stain on the America designed by our Founding Fathers. We must, together, wipe out the stain he has created on our great nation’s destiny by refusing him the presidency in November.”